What if the book every conservative needs to read was published fifty years ago?

At only 100 pages, The Conscience of a Conservative has inspired conservatives for decades, yet there has been no revival of this book in the recent groundswell of conservative thought in the United States.

Written by Barry Goldwater in 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative built momentum for his unsuccessful 1964 presidential election. He may have lost that election, but the influence of his legacy continues to shape the conservative movement.

This classic political book should be required reading for anyone who attends a Tea Party. Goldwater’s slim manifesto still accurately explains our philosophy and political movement.

Far too many conservatives struggle to articulate why he or she identifies with the movement. It’s easy to express what we’re against: higher taxes, big government programs, the welfare state, and intrusion into our private lives. But what do we support? What does it mean to be a conservative?

Writing in a similar era when Republicans were also painted as the “party of no,” Goldwater opens his book by defining conservatism. He writes:

…the Conservative looks upon politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.

He also explains the difference between conservatives and liberals:

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature. The conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual need spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man’s nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man’s spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand—in the name of a concern for “human beings” –regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness the society’s political and economic forces into a collective effort to compel “progress.” In this approach, I believe they fight against Nature.

Goldwater outlines the three aspects of what a conservative believes. All three should be memorized and understood by anyone claiming the label of conservative.

1. Every person is a unique member of human species.

“The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.”

2. The economic and spiritual are “inextricably intertwined.

“He cannot be economically free, or even economically efficient, if he is enslaved politically; conversely, man’s political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the State.”

3. Each individual is responsible for his or her own material and spiritual development.

“The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings.”

The Conscience of a Conservative continues to cover the dangers of big government, states’ rights, civil rights, labor, education, taxes and spending, and education.

If busy conservatives only took the time to read the first chapter, “The Perils of Power,” “States’ Rights,” “Taxes and Spending,” and “The Welfare State,” the Tea Party movement would be much better off.

Again, if you’re searching for a book on the path that conservatives should take to restore our nation to the vision that the Founders intended, The Conscious of a Conservative is a smart place to start.

While Goldwater grew more libertarian and antagonistic towards social conservatives towards the end of his life, The Conscious of a Conservative is a fast read that articulately lays out the timeless case for conservative values.

Over the last fifty years, our goal still remains the same. The charge Goldwater wrote in 1960 still applies today:

Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom.

In a time when millions of Americans are seeking alternatives to the Big Government, Chicago-style tactics of the Obama Administration, conservatives should read Goldwater’s classic.

Cross-posted at Smart Girl Nation.

After growing increasingly frustrated on Twitter yesterday, I decided to put up a post that gave some background and perspective on the Tea Parties. Aside from a supporter of the Tea Parties, I’m not an official organizer. However, I tracked both conservative insider information and media stories on the issue and wanted to address some of the issues that both Joe Lance at Tennessee Ticket and Dan Lehr at Public Interest brought up yesterday in their thoughtful posts.

Not a Sex Act
Many people were suddenly introduced to several new words this week: teabagging (which won’t be explained in this post. Google it yourself) and astroturfing in what I would call a blatant attempt by the media to misdirect the real meaning behind Tea Parties. Fiscal conservatives and frustrated taxpayers throughout the country have followed the progression of Tea Parties since Rick Santelli, online editor for CNBC, came up with the idea out of frustration earlier this year.

The first Tea Party was held in Chicago and erupted into a grassroots movement by fiscal conservatives and libertarians who were tired of not standing up for their values. The idea spread and on February 27, approximately 40 cities held tea parties with more than 30,000 people in attendance. Smart Girl Politics, the DontGo Movement and Top Conservatives on Twitter pushed the idea out to the thousands of conservatives who had flocked to Twitter in order to organize.

Interestingly, this coincided with CPAC, the annual gathering of conservative activities in Washington, D.C. The 2009 CPAC ended up being the largest one ever in its 30-plus year history. More than 10,000 conservatives converged on Washington happy to be free from the shackles of big-government, Bush Republicanism and anxious to reclaim the movement that Edmund Burke started more than three centuries ago.

The situation was perfect. Grassroots conservative leaders and conservative organizations saw the power of Tea Parties and recognized the frustration that many average Americans were facing with the bailout and stimulus acts. What was started as a pure grassroots movement was harnessed by the larger groups such as FreedomWorks, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, and every conservative leader who’s formed a PAC including Mike Huckabee (I’m on all their email lists and watched it unfold). When Sean Hannity, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh picked up on the idea and started spreading the news to the masses, I can understand how the left made the argument for astroturfing (fake grassroots. Get it?). For more information astrotufing vs. grassroots read Patrick Ruffini’s post at The Next Right.

But Conservatives Don’t Get the Web? Right?
To understand the origins of Tea Parties, readers must first get the state of the conservative movement. It’s been tough for conservatives over the past few years. While we had an “R” in the White House, President Bush rarely reflected any form of conservativism–limited government or fiscal conservatism. Stifled by a party holding a death grip on anyone who dissented with the President and angered by the left who hurled insults at anything hinting at conservative or Republican, we really couldn’t do anything but wait for the administration to end and possibly face an even worse McCain administration or the horrors of an Obama socialized government.

To make matters worse, Republicans had watched the left leapfrog over them in new media and organize through online tools. We knew that this was the future of the web, but top party leadership ignored us.

Some of us, aware of the power of the Internet, started organizing. Using the tools that Obama is now famous for, we flew under the radar and jumped on a new, little-known platform known as Twitter.

Everyone now knows about Twitter, but for the past two years, this has been one of the main ways that Conservatives organized. Conservatives individualistic pundits by nature compared to socialistic-leaning collectivism on the left. That’s why we write on our virtual soapboxes rather than comment and build a community like the left (DailyKos, Talking Points Memo). Twitter gave us the ability to express our own thoughts (in 140 characters or less) while creating a network of activists throughout the country. Talk radio has been credited with the rise of conservativism in the 90s. Twitter will likely account for the re-organization of conservatives in the future.

The DontGo Movement was the first step of the Tea Parties. Emerging in August 2008 when Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi refused to address the rising energy costs, several House members turned to social media to revolt. Tweeting from Blackberries in the dark on the House Floor (Pelosi ordered the lights off an CSPAN’s camera’s turned off), these Republican Congressmen kept communicating through Twitter, blogger conference calls and holding press conferences on Ustream. A few Twitterers took notice and using the hashtag to organize, created the #dontgo movement.

This developed into Top Conservatives on Twitter (#tcot) and Smart Girl Politics (#sgp), who all ended up leading the charge of the Tea Parties.

So Who Organized it?
It made me laugh yesterday to see the attempts to label the Tea Parties as astroturfing. These parties were so grassroots that in many cities people who have never been involved in politics organized them. I have never heard of the two people who organized the one in Chattanooga. Other active Republicans were clueless too.

In fact, the Tea Parties were so grassroots that Republican strategists complained that the movement seemed disjointed. Conference calls were chaotic because people who have never organized events were running these things. If the media only researched instead of reposting talking points or White House conference calls. Note that I wasn’t involved in the Tea Party development aside from a few tweets. However, I followed the progress and tracked insider reports as well as media stories. The frame expressed by most newspapers, CNN and networks couldn’t have been more different than how it happened.

In an era when George Soros funds “grassroots efforts” on the left to loud acclaim, I’m left wondering what on earth is grassroots anymore? Is it possible to organize a nationwide movement without money, staff time and resources? No. Does that mean that the minute and existing organization with those capabilities steps in it ceases to be grassroots? I don’t believe so. However, like so many things on the left, definitions change to suit their purposes.